Sing Out the Glad News: Hymn Tunes in Canada ed. by John Beckwith (review)

HUMANITIES 211 also suggest contributory factors here. Readings which I find more problematicinclude substituting the term 'primal' for the now discredited 'primitive.' Does this really sidestep our conceptual problems, or create new ones? And might it not be a romanticization to see Northwest Coast Indian art as speaking of an experience of the world which precedes differentiation, 'a realm where creatures have not yet been isolated from their natural backgrounds, where the distinction between humans and animals or between the sexes does not yet exist ...'? Bill Reid's desire to bridge the past and the present is one of which Doris Shadbolt can write as a colleague. Her book is the culmination of a journey which began with the exhibition of 1967, 'Arts of the Raven.' Organized by Shadbolt and curated by 'Messers Duff, Holm and Reid,' it presented the artifacts ofthe Indian people of the Northwest Coast as 'art, high art, not ethnology.' In recent years a renaissance of Indian art has converged with a renewal of Indian political consciousness. The last section of the book is a discussion of Reid's transition from a position of detached pessimism to one of support for Haida land claims· and resistance to logging in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Shadbolt herself has made a significant political decision in devoting a major study to an artist who is working in what hitherto has been considered a marginal or anomalous area. Both Reid's work and Shadbolt's book are testimonies to the high achievement and continuing relevance of a. culture which has been dispossessed - culturally and territorially - by the blind processes o~ European settlement. They speak at a time when it is urgent that this be understood and acknowledged - culturally and politically - by all Canadians. (GERTA MORAY) John Beckwith, editor. Sing Out the Glad News: Hymn Tunes in Canada. CanMus Documents 1 Institute for Canadian Music. 166. $15.00 paper Sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; ... Sing modestly. Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation, that you may not destroy the harmony; ... Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. .. Oohn Wesley, 1761) Thus did John Wesley admonish his followers over two hundred years ago in his Select Hymns: with Tunes Annext; Designed Chiefly for the Use of the People called Methodists. Perhaps 'the People called Methodists' in Wesley's time saw no inherent contradiction between lustiness and modesty; so long as an eye was turned towards God, a harmonious 212 LETI'ERS IN CANADA 1987 spiritual region located somewhere between vocal somnolencyand abject bawling would, presumably, be revealed to the pious congregant. A centuryand a halfafterWesley, that great Yankee iconoclast Charles Ives, tapping into the memories of his own Protestant heritage in small-town New England, recognized that the braying and the off-key mumbling of amateur hymn singers was aesthetically largely irrelevant in the face of genuine religious fervour - 'substance' triumphant over 'manner.' Whatever the manner of performance, from city cathedral to village kirk, singing out the glad news is a deeply rooted tradition in the Protestant world, and for the inheritors of that tradition these homely, durable musical artifacts, and the secure sense of community surrounding them, linger in the memory with a persistence rivalled by few other collective musical experiences. It is therefore somehow fitting that this inaugural volume of CanMus Documents, consisting of seven papers presented at the first conference . convened by the University of Toronto's Institute for Canadian Music, should concern Canadian hymnody, a true 'grass-roots' tradition, as the editor states in his Preface, uniting scholars in several disciplines. The seven essays, ranging from examinations of hymn-singing among the Dogrib and Eastern Woodlands Indians to detailed studies of early hymn books and fuging tunes in British North America, though competent examples ofwhat might be called descriptive scholarship, are not likely to promote a significantly deeper understanding of Canadian musical life. The findings ofthese seven scholars, with sgme exceptions, range from the predictable to the trivial. From Elaine Keillor we learn that 'the Dogribs have developed a...